Nearly four decades into its career, Iron Maiden remains a well-oiled, merchandise-armed and unstoppable machine. The mighty sextet from the U.K. has released 15 studio albums, 11 live recordings, a fistful of EPs, several compilations and, perhaps most successfully, has toured around the world almost two dozen times.

After blasting through Europe this summer on its current Maiden England World Tour – a resurrection and reshaping of its production behind 1988’s Seventh Son of a Seventh Son that launched more than a year ago from Charlotte, N.C. – the band returned to the U.S. this week for an additional seven dates before heading to Mexico and South America.

As on the trek’s first leg, which last summer came to Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Irvine for two sold-out shows, Maiden is once again stopping in cities the group either hasn’t performed in or hadn’t played in 10-25 years, including Las Vegas, Austin and Nashville. This latest set of dates culminates with a one-off daylong festival dubbed The Battle of San Bernardino, Sept. 13 at San Manuel Amphitheater and featuring appearances from Megadeth, Anthrax, Testament, Overkill and Sabaton.

“San Bernardino is great because (the venue) can expand to fit as many people as we can get in there,” 55-year-old vocalist Bruce Dickinson noted during a phone interview earlier this week. At press time, about 30,000 tickets had already been sold for the 65,000-capacity sprawl, with thousands more expected to help fill its massive lawn.

Dickinson says it’s an ideal opportunity for diehards to discover the extravagant efforts Maiden has put into reinventing their Seventh Son show.

“We do have a lot of the scenery and things like that, but we have a whole series of improvements,” he explains. “We have new technology. We’ve got pyrotechnics that are way more capable than the old ones – which were like firecrackers. We have flame balls that will roast people down to about the 40th row, so that’s pretty good.

“It’s sort of bizarre, though, because we have all of these flames and yet the whole scenery is supposed to be ice. We haven’t melted anything yet, but we’re getting pretty close.”

The 30,000-plus crowd they will play to next weekend is now average size each night, a figure Dickinson insists is higher than ever for Maiden.

“It’s huge,” he says, humbled by the number. “We’re going to South America and we’re already going to be playing to 10,000-12,000 more people than we did the last time we were there. It’s all really quite big and extraordinary, this reaction. We’ve played to as many as 60,000-70,000 people in some of these places, and that’s unreal.”

The set list, naturally including a handful from Seventh Son, has been bolstered with metal staples from earlier albums: “The Number of the Beast,” “Run to the Hills,” “Iron Maiden,” “Phantom of the Opera.” As Steve Harris, the band’s principle songwriter, bassist and founding member, pointed out before last year’s Irvine shows, their song choices have been modified to include more favorites that younger generations of fans have discovered.

“That’s been going on for the last 20 years,” Dickinson adds.

The vocalist joined Maiden in 1981, replacing singer Paul Di’Anno, who stepped in for original frontman Paul Day in 1976. (Founding drummer Clive Burr, by the way, passed away in March after a lifelong battle with multiple sclerosis.)

Dickinson left the band temporarily in 1994, replaced by Blaze Bayley before returning in 1999. Two albums were issued during his absence, The X Factor and Virtual XI. But in 2000, Maiden unveiled Brave New World, with Dickinson once again on vocals. While on tour behind that effort, he was greeted by a slew of fresh faces.

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